27.— FISH-CULTURAL INVESTIGATIONS AT ST. ANDREWS MARINE LAB- 

 ORATORY, SCOTLAND. 



By w. c. Mcintosh, m. d., ll. d., f. r. s , 



Member of the Fishery Board for Scotland, etc. 



I.— ON THE FISHES DEVELOPED AT THE ST. ANDREWS MARINE LABORATORY 

 (UNDER THE FISHERY BOARD FOR SCOTLAND). 



Since 1883 special attention has been devoted at St. Andrews to the subject of 

 the development of marine fishes, an attention which was first stimulated by the 

 absence of reliable knowledge on this subject as well as of the eggs and life-histories 

 of even the commonest and most important of our food-fishes. At this period the 

 greatest uncertainty prevailed as to the floating or sinking of the eggs of such fishes; 

 indeed, among strictly scientific men in Great Britain no attention had been given to the 

 subject, and the most eminent of them thought that the floating or sinking of these eggs 

 might be due wholly to the temperature of the water, just as others deemed it might be 

 due to the oil-globule, overlooking the fact that many are devoid of that structure. 



Previous to this period the life-history of scarcely a single marine food- fish had 

 been studied in Great Britain. It was known that Sars had observed the development 

 of the cod in Norwegian waters, and that Agassiz, Ryder, and others in the United 

 States of America had paid considerable attention to those of their shores, but the field 

 was almost untouched in this country. A commencement was made during the trawl- 

 ing expeditions of 1884, and, with the aid of Lord Dalhousie and the Fishery Board 

 for Scotland, a systematic examination of such forms as were available was begun at 

 the St. Andrews Marine Laboratory, and it was fortunate that, shortly afterward, 

 the aid and cooperation of Prof. E. E. Prince, now Commissioner of Fisheries in 

 Canada, were available. 



On the present occasion I shall devote my remarks to the mention of those fishes 

 which for the first time have been hatched at the St. Andrews Marine Laboratory — 

 the oldest institution of the kind in Great Britain. 



No pelagic egg is more abundant on the east coast than that of the grey gurnard 

 (Trigla gurnardus), and it is quite easy to fertilize ripe eggs from the females and 

 hatch them in the tanks. The larva 1 are hardy, and in open-air tanks communicating 

 with the sea could readily be reared to the young stages. The minute characters of 

 the egg, larvae and young stages have been described and figured in the publications 

 emanating from the laboratory, and the same remarks apply to the subsequent forms. 



The armed bullhead ( Agonus cataphr actus) deposits its demersal eggs on the bottom 

 of the bay and on stones, while the larva) and young are only common in the bottom 

 nets. The ova are easily hatched in the laboratory, and the bright colors of the young 



are characteristic. 



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F. C. B. 1893—16 



